The Home of a Nomad
by architecture of destruction
Summary: You cannot make homes out of people. Jean/Marco, AU


You cannot make homes out of people. Marco/Jean, Death AU

Warnings: Death, haha FUCK YOU TOO

a/n: let me just curl up and die—fuck, every time i re-read this to correct it i was sitting there like: nOOOOOO WHY DID THIS HAPPEN wHAe did I WRItE THiS I'm such a ASSSHOLEEEE nothing can explain how much I hate this story

as usual, can one disown writing? Anyone wanna adopt my story? It's parentless. Ha I joke "adopt" my story and I'll have to give you a dentention and send you to jail. ahahahahahhaahohohohhahahgagagagaaa

One of those laughs are not like the others—okay on with the story (I'm just trying to trick you into thinking it's a happy story and I'm just shitting you abut it being sad)

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The Home of the Nomad

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"What do you think happens after you die?" Marco asks, feet swinging underneath him as he picks the last daisy out of the garden of Miss Picker, surely two teenager boys have better things to do than to pick out dying flowers out of a heartless womans garden, but the fact is, they don't.

Jean can't be bothered to spend more than $5 doing anything, really, and Marco has never been one to play video games or study too hard. So instead of bothering themselves over that upcoming test in Math, they decided to just play outside until their feet hurt and their faces and hands are covered in dirt.

Jean stops abruptly, snatching the flower from Marco's frozen hand and throwing it into the pink wooden basket, arching a brow at his friends random question and grunting a hesitant, "I don't know, you die, decompose into the ground and that's the end of everything, I guess."

"You don't believe in Heaven or rebirth?" Marco quips nervously, his fingers curling into the palm of his hands as he smiles a bit weakly, "I'd like to think there's something after death."

"Something after death?" Jean says slowly, scratching his nose until he feels the skin bristling in annoyance. He never thought of death much, his parents and grandparents having children relatively young leaves pretty much his entire family well and alive, and even the ones that did die off, it was before he could tell the difference between pink and blue. He never _had_ to think about death before this, honestly.

"I hope you're reborn," Marco says softly, crouched down near the ground as he draws small swirls around their feet, their knee's bumping into each other as he tilts his head up and smiles widely, "So we can always be together."

Jean pauses, or maybe it's his lungs and his heart that stops, the rhythm coming to a painful halt when he realises with a deep sinking heart that Marco isn't just bringing this up for the fuck of it toquestion his sanity.

"Marco..." He chokes out quietly, "What... Why are you..."

"The doctor said," Marco interrupts, voice cold and detached, "I'll die next month, or maybe the month after that. I'll be in the ground, dead."

There's no sounds, the world pausing to give him just a fucking _bloody_ moment. Nothing leaves him, not tears, not words, not a breath or an exhale. Just silence, as if he had died himself.

"Oh," Jean says slowly, eyes widening as he falls back, crushing half the garden in his futile attempt to stay sane, "Dying?"

"Jean" Marco whispers, hands cupping his face as he leans forward, "I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"I'm sorry."

"No, _why_, why you? Why? What's going on, Marco you're supposed to go to University with me and you fucking _promised_ to get that apartment with me and we'll raise a goddamn brat and there'll be—"

Marco laughs, short and curt, as he looks down to his fading fingers, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Jean hoarsely whispers, reaching out and holding Marco's hand in his, unaware of his own tears tumbling from his eyes, "Just don't die."

"I can't, Jean, I don't have a choice."

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Jean doesn't go home.

Or maybe there never really was a home in the first place. His home had always been empty, cruel and full of vile smiles of people who only want him to leave because he's a fag and they don't like fags.

For once in his fucking life, he's surprised that he's numb to their insults and whispered hisses as he packs up a month worth of clothes and throws it over his shoulder, "I'm going to Marco's for a while. I'll be back though."

"You don't have too," his father calls after him and he slams the door on the rest of the words.

He returns home to Marco.

Marco's parents don't greet him anymore (the only people who were willing and accepting of two boys being _together_ as in together forever) Jean watches with sunken eyes as they keep themselves busy with work and dishes, washing the same counter twelve times because anything is better than thinking about your son's life span ending.

_Anything_.

Marco is fine, well as fine as he pretends being, smiling and holding Jean's hands as they walk in public as they always do. And Jean tries hard not to notice how the bones in Marco's hands seem softer, or how Marco can't walk for more than 15 minutes because the sun's too hot, or how Marco can't eat anything but jello and pudding anymore.

He tries.

Everything is so _wrong__, _Marco's dying and he can't even say the things he wants to say, he can't hold Marco the way he wants, he can't find himself doing _anything_ because everything is coming to an end and what are you supposed to do? It's like if someone told him he's going to die today, maybe he'd lie and say he'd do all the things he wishes he could do, but he knows he wouldn't. He'd spend each moment on his laptop, studying and going out with friends until his last dying breath.

"Is this fine?" Jean asks, blanket wrapped warmly around Marco's slimming figure as he curls in beside his boyfriend, trying to choke down the fears and tears with everything happy that's happened in his life (but everything is Marco, Marco, _Marco_, and Marco isn't alive anymore).

"Yeah," Marco says softly, chin placed into Jean's shoulder-blade as his eyes flutter shut, "Don't you think it's a waste going to bed so early?"

Jean sucks in sharply. Maybe Marco hadn't meant it, but everything is already so _fragile_ and hearing Marco mention his own death in such a subtle way is too heartbreaking even for someone as heartless as himself.

"No, this is perfect."

"Jean, how is this perfect?" Marco croaks out, "I'm going to die soon, _soon_, you can't just say shit like that—"

"What am I supposed to do?" Jean finds himself murmuring, too softly, too weakly, as if the entire world had drained him for all that he has, weakly he struggles to hold Marco closer to himself just to confirm that he's _there_.

Marco pauses, a dry laugh following, "Do you still think there's nothing after death?"

"I don't know," he tries to ignore the way Marco's figure seems too small forMarco, a boy that used to be on the track team with him, the guy that _beat_ him 8 times in 2 weeks and made Jean hate him for an entire year (and entire year he wasted instead of spending time with him). He swallows down his own guilt, trying to conjure anything that'll put the fragile boy at ease, "I hope you'll come back, so I can be with you again."

"Do you think it'll hurt?"

"No," Jean laughs out, slowly running his fingers through his brown hair, trying to keep urge to curl around Marco and _sob—_the real kind of crying people don't do nowadays, the type of crying that makes your whole body quake as you search to comfort yourself—he smiles bitterly, "Don't think like that, maybe you won't die."

"Jean," Marco scolds weakly, the hope already gone from his eyes and Jean's smile fades, "Please... Please don't—"

"I know, I'm sorry I shouldn't pressure you and stuff but—"

"I don't want to die," Marco's eyes close, no tears are falling but his entire body is shaking.

"Marco—"

"You don't understand," Marco exhales out, his lungs filling with despair and poison, he reaches out slowly, fingers wrapping around Jean's wrist and holding as tight as he can, "I'm _terrified_."

"I'll be beside you," Jean chokes out, "Until your very last breath."

"But after that?" Marco wheezes, nails digging into Jean's skin before he sits up abruptly, hands grabbing the side of Jean's face and hanging his own head low, so low so his face cannot be seen. "They say after you die is when you truly die, when no one talks about you anymore, when the people around you move on and forget about you. You become a distant memory, I don't want to be a distant memory that you try desperately each day to forget."

He pauses, hands dropping weakly to his sides as he looks away in shame.

"Don't let me truly die, Jean... I don't want to _die_."

(He makes no promises, because he's never made a single promise in his life that he could keep but;)

"I won't ever forget you."

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First love is always remembered as the cruelest ones, maybe because they never last or because first love is impossible to keep. For him, his first love was Marco, his first _everything_ was Marco.

And that's very, very awfully hard to forget.

(But he wishes he could forget, he wishes he could forget their kisses with the music blaring too high as they push each other down, gripping each other's bodies and hitting their teeth against each other, fighting behind the school and smiling at each other like they have a secret in the middle of class).

On the 28th day of living with his _Home_, he wakes up in the middle of the night, pushing a loose strand of Marco's hair from his face, smiling lovingly before it falls, the light being switched on when he realises—

"Marco?" He calls out, eyes going wide as he screams and reaches for _something_ to fix this situation—phone, phone—he thinks, fumbling to call before he's trying to push Marco onto the ground to give him CPR and—

"Honey," Marco's mom calls out weakly, tears pooling down her face in two beautiful constant streams, "His ribs will break if you do that... You can't save him," she pauses, taking in a sharp breath as she looks away as if in pain, "He died 2 hours ago."

The whole world blurs for a second, every thought and moment of Marco fading into a dirty Abyss and he thinks that; _Ah, yes, this is Hell_.

Or maybe reality has always been Hell.

"Oh," he finds himself saying, fingers shaking over the lifeless heart of his boyfriend, his lover_, his _soul mate.

"I... I didn't want to wake you." She cries, wrapping her arms around her waist and looking to the ground as she falls back, her bottom lip bleeding and her body scrawny.

"Oh," he voices out again, unable to look down, unable to even _breathe_ without feeling the entire world crashing into him and suffocating him until he's choked.

"Dead," he repeats, the word slurring off his tongue as he stands on his jello legs.

(And he really wishes he could forget just so he could soothe his own pain).

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His eyes flutter open, the warmth of another person curled into his side as he groans, his body feeling heavy as he tries to block the onslaught streams pouring through his bedroom window. To no avail, he groans, ready to push whoever's laying next to him onto the ground before he freezes and finds himself lifting up his arm, smiling softly to the figure curled up beside him.

"Marco," Jean says with a long fake sigh, trying to sound like he wants Marco to get up except they both know he really doesn't, but they both know Jean is too much of a sucker to actually want to do that.

"Be quiet," Marco grumbles, sitting up while trying to rub his eyes.

Jean frowns, cupping his face with a worried frown, "Marco? What's wrong, why are you crying?"

"I had a bad dream," Marco shrugs off, trying to remember why he can't remember his dream—he's always been a vivid dreamer, someone who can swim in their own dreams and feel the ripple of the waves. Jean scoffs, pushing away Marco's bangs with an adoring smile.

"I heard if you wake up crying you had to watch yourself die in another realm," he jokes.

Marco blinks, trying hard not to out-right laugh at Jean's silliness, before leaning in and giving his lover his usual good morning kiss.

"That's silly, are you saying I died somewhere else? How could I just go and leave you?"

Jean huffs, face suddenly falling serious as the world swirls black, "Then don't, don't leave me Marco."

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"Do you think the dead dream?" Marco's mother asks softly, not quite touching him but keeping her docile fingers near his shoulder just incase he falls, or maybe she's trying to steady herself, or maybe, there isn't supposed to be any comfort in the action at all, maybe she's just doing it out of duty.

"He's smiling," Jean says, smiling back to the corpse laying silently in the presented coffin, "So I guess it's a good dream."

"I'm glad," she says slowly, pushing her hair behind her ears before taking a shaky step back, "He always had lots of nightmares as a kid."

"What do you think he's dreaming of?"

She pauses, a small sad smile as she whispers low and breathless, "You. I believe he'll always be dreaming of you."

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A/N:

You can all kill me now. I give you permission. /criescriescriescries WHY DID I EVEN WRITE THIS, I HATE MYSELF SO MUCH RIGHT NOW... Okay, I just had to go and make you all think that he's alive but _nooooo_—actually you can interpret it however you want. Maybe it's dead Marco's dream, or maybe it's Marco in another realm waking up from the other realm where he died. WHATEVER LET'S YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT

So yeah, leave a comment.

Orrr... Uh. Idk. Yeah, comment is good.


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